


Aerodynamic

by 7veilsphaedra



Category: Saiyuki, Saiyuki Ibun
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-08
Updated: 2014-08-08
Packaged: 2018-02-12 08:51:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2103141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/7veilsphaedra/pseuds/7veilsphaedra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A stunt-pilot and former WW1 soldier, who thinks he has lost everything during the war, discovers how flight provides the perspective needed for forgiving and forgetting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aerodynamic

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written for the 2013 7thnight-smut giftfic exchange at Dreamwidth.org to the prompt, period transition into the modern era.

**AERODYNAMIC**

 

Two boys were born in the same month of the same year at the end of an old century, and their entry into the new one was marked by unimaginable changes. They both grew up on the edge of real wilderness, beside a lake surrounded by steep mountains and dark temperate rainforest, on pioneer homesteads within a half-hour horseback ride of each other or a fifteen-minute sail if winds were fair. Their parents were good friends and neighbours, and they became good friends and neighbours. They set up a signal flag system on their boat docks so they could communicate with each other and, when their morning chores were finished, frequently met up. They went to the same one-room schoolhouse and country church together. They sailed the lake, camped on the beaches, hiked through dense forests and climbed the mountains together. They learned to fish, hunt, raise crops, tend animals and build together. They were the best of friends. 

One brilliant summer day, after they turned seventeen, they sailed to an isolated cove because, even though they lived in one of the least populated places on earth, they still felt the need for privacy from their families. In that cove, within a bathwater-warm lake that had turned golden with the late evening sun, they secretly became more than the best of friends.

Then war broke out, and they enlisted together. 

 

**2:15 pm, Saturday, 26th June, 1920**

 

So intent was Lily Palmerson upon the latest garden fête novelty, a lemon curd and cocoanut slice, and consulting her late father’s pocket watch for the sixth time that hour, she failed to notice the slyness of Henrietta Odell’s discourse on primrose pathways.

“ _Primula vulgaris_ have such a meek and unassuming appearance: a circlet of broad, irregularly crenelated leaves within the very centre of which emerges the perfect pouffe of tiny buds — like a simple, hand-tied bridal bouquet of the sort one expects to see in the hands of a farrier’s or carpenter’s bride ….”

As Lily had always considered herself the plainest and brownest of worker bees amongst the hybrid roses and hydrangeas of _Daughters of the Empire: Central Interior Division,_ she never imagined there was anything of interest to discuss about things which were like her — let alone enough to interest one of the Daughters’ loftiest doyens, wife of Everett Odell, railway baron, whose glittering mansion on Victoria Avenue had no less than five household servants on hire, and who was ever eager to remind others of it. Although all the Daughters professed their love for flowers, most of them hired gardeners. Lily never knew Henrietta had such an interest in botanics. 

“… Their simplicity deceives you into believing they will enhance your flower beds with neat, trim little borders with tidy blooms in colours which complement their settings, never spreading beyond their allotted space in the arrangement of plants, never threatening to upset the carefully maintained balance of the garden ….” 

In early May, Lily had tied on her work apron and broad-brimmed hat and carefully thinned all the primroses by the North Shore Hall where the society’s _Annual Garden Tea and Bazaar_ was to be celebrated in mid-June to raise funds for a legion on the south shore. Thousands of primroses had lined these beds, crowded, rootbound and choked with scruffy, straw-dead patches to blight the garden’s beauty. 

“The weather warms, the sun climbs closer to our hemisphere, and the long awaited morning arrives when the buds finally burst, and what does one find? Sweet little blooms which make a pathway so doughty and demure? No!”

Instead of composting the still living discards, however, Lily stacked them between sheets of wet newspaper lined with waxed paper in the push-cart filled with crates she had carried over on the S.S. Moyie earlier that morning, and brought them back with her to the East Shore where they now lined her own pathways and garden beds. They had rewarded her industry by exploding into brilliant clusters of blooms — nothing to compare to the floral triumph over which Henrietta presently presided, splashed with sunlight and at the height of their season — but cheerful and bright all the same. She couldn’t imagine what problem Mrs. Odell might find with the flowers, but since it sounded dreadful, decided she best pay closer heed. 

“No, indeed, my friends: one discovers strange, previously hidden lapses of heritage which lead to savage mutations and grotesque colours laid out in garish display to offend one’s senses… .” 

“Dear, dear me, how the suspense mounts!” Ernestine Spofford interrupted — her voice droll and her eyes dancing. “The hour is pressing. My tea is getting cold and, I fear my ancient heartbeat shall cease at long, long last before you finally divulge what’s troubling you, Henny. Pray, spare my advancing years by capping that cavil with a firmer bottle-stopper, or tell us, quite frankly and, more to the point, briefly: whatever is the matter?”

That was the first inkling of Lily’s that something not entirely floral was up. 

Henrietta drew herself to full height and resplendence. In that moment, every woman at the annual tea and bazaar turned as one to face Lily, who blinked behind her wire-rimmed spectacles and continued to nibble on her dainty, oblivious. Under those expressions of dismay or implacable accusation, however, an anxiety percolated which she had never felt before, turning the lemon curd to bile and the grated cocoanut into a rough swallow as it slid past the lump in her throat. Lily blinked again, on guard.

Henrietta sniffed with supreme disdain, and all the ladies lifted their eggshell-thin Spode teacups, so as best to hide their snoots lest coarse and regrettable words shock their sensibilities, but they were sorely disappointed. After chewing over her thoughts, Henrietta released a groan of exasperation instead. 

“You have a way of knocking the wind out of a woman’s sails, Ernestine. After a reckoning like that, who would have the heart to reproach the motherless lamb? Look at her — but, sweet slaughter of the innocents, someone has to set the girl straight! We may live on the frontier, yet we still cannot allow our ladies to comport themselves like Klondike Kates. Are you going to sit there and tell me you intend to say nothing?”

Ernestine nodded, considering.

“There are others far crueler than us.” Henrietta waved her kid gloved finger.

“All in good time, my dear, all in good time.”

Whatever Ernestine had meant by in good time, it was not forthcoming. Lily had always been left on the outskirts of the Daughter’s conversations, but this time, it was as though she was being actively shunned. Women she had considered dear friends ignored her; others were short, and no matter how much she wracked her brains, she couldn’t think of a single thing she had done to deserve it.

After the raffle was announced, and it was discovered she had won, Lily collected her prize of two tickets to the circus which was to appear in Nelson mid-July, quietly took her leave of the Daughters and — thankful that her long, unfashionable skirt hid her trembling knees — departed from their midst. Without a glance behind her, she crossed the west arm on the cable ferry to the wharf where the S.S. Moyie was docked for her return journey. 

On a balloon-back chair covered in green-and-white striped liseré, she found a copy of a Baltimore Sun newspaper abandoned by an American businessman who decided to forgo the set menu supper of poached salmon in dill with baby peas and potatoes for a cigar on deck. When she tried to return it to him, he waved her off and declared he was finished with the old rubbish. Lily almost took his words to mean her, until she realized he had only meant that the newspaper was free for her to read, which she was only too glad to do. 

The Baltimore Sun’s correspondent in Berlin was, to Lily’s immense surprise, a woman! — One Marguerite Harrison who had audaciously arrived in the German city prior to its occupation by Allied troops. Intrigued, Lily read onward.

> “Hotel Bristol,” I said in a commanding tone.
> 
> “What!” the cabby almost shouted. “The Hotel Bristol is _abgesperrt!_ Only the _Militär_ can pass through the Brandenburger Thor at this hour of the night, _Gnädige.”_
> 
> “I belong to the _Militär,”_ I said grandly, displaying my pass from Cassel, and at the same time beginning to throw my luggage in the front seat. 
> 
> I knew that Berlin was in a state of siege but I did not anticipate that I would have any more difficulty in getting to the Bristol than to any other hotel. What I did not realize was that the Wilhelmstraβe, where fighting was even then taking place, opened into the Unter den Linden where the Bristol was situated.
> 
> The driver muttered something about shooting, but he was of the old school and deeply impressed by my official pass. So he started off, albeit unwillingly …
> 
> As we drove down the Budapesther Straβe toward the Brandenburger Thor I began to hear the barking of rifles and the sharp put-put of machine guns in the distance.
> 
> “Shall I go on, _Fräulein?”_ The driver asked respectfully, but anxiously.
> 
> _“Gewiβ,”_ I answered sternly.
> 
> To this day I have never known why the patrol on duty at the Brandenburger Thor let me through. I think it was due as much to sheer astonishment at seeing a lone woman under such circumstances as to my military pass … As we approached the entrance to the Wilhelmstraβe, there was a sharp fusillade quite close to us, followed by the rattle of a “sewing machine,” as the Germans called their machine guns. Bullets bounced on the pavement and ricocheted from the walls of buildings around us … In another minute, we drew up in from of the Bristol. Every curtain was drawn, shutters were fastened, and the heavy wrought-iron doors were bolted and barred. I paid the driver, who dumped by bags on the sidewalk and vanished at a gallop, without saying a word. Then I rang the night bell and stood waiting, pressed as close as possible against the door. Presently I heard the key turn in the lock and a night porter, looking almost as frightened as I felt, poked his head through a crack in the door. 
> 
> _“Um Gottes Willen, Fräulein,”_ was all he said as he grabbed me with one hand and my bags with the other, literally dragging me into the vestibule. 

Lily’s heartbeat quickened, a sensation unfelt since she had first read the story of Edith Cavell that possibilities had opened heretofore denied her. It did not astonish her that a woman could take on a man’s career. Just the year prior, an article and series of photographs of her skill and devisement had been published in an international magazine, but she had obscured her identity by using only initials for her first name, which also happened to be the same initials in her late brother Jack’s formal names. Contrary to the sermons administered by the Vicar of St. Anselme’s every Sunday, she had hidden her light under a bushel because Lily had thought it was essential, that it was dangerous for women to encroach on men’s terrain and that women who did so would be firmly suppressed. It astounded her that a woman could make her way around the world openly and not be shot in the process. This discovery was even more marvelous than Mrs. Harrison’s actual essay, which turned out to be a carefully worded caution against punitive reparations against the defeated Germans that might foster sympathy towards Bolshevism. Mrs. Harrison published under her full name and never tried to hide who she was in the least.

Lily was particularly struck by the contrast between Mrs. Odell and Mrs. Harrison. Henrietta blustered a great deal about the rights of women to vote and to be elected to parliament and the legislature, yet she presided over a closed society of women who kept each other in check, whereas Marguerite had driven directly into a war zone and checked into, both, her hotel and her career while bullets zinged and clipped around her. Lily instantly knew she wanted to be a woman of action.

In that moment, her life changed. Lily decided she was going to accomplish at least one bold and outrageous feat every day. Resolved, she pulled out her notebook and pencil and started a list.

**2:30 pm, Wednesday, 14th July, 1920**

 

The Ktunaxa canoe — silent as it glided through cat-tails at the southern bog-end of the lake — resembled a capsized boat with a submerged bow. Gordon watched it float away as he slipped out of his plane’s cockpit and eased onto its bobbing pontoon. In spite of his Irvin jacket, he shuddered — not because of the biting dampness, pervasive under swollen clouds, but at unbidden memories of another time spent on wet buckboards by other swamps with ghostly echoes of rifle retorts, screams of dying men and the sickening gulps as they struggled not to be swallowed by mud. A tow-line was tossed over to the breakwater where Jimmy heaved him portside. Gordon glanced over his shoulder as the jutting lower jaw of the canoe efficiently parted the reeds and disappeared from sight, its fisherfolk fading into the mist like spirits.

“Don’t get too discouraged by the weather.” Jimmy was mumbling about a back-up plan. 

Gordon grunted, pulled out his knapsack and leapt nimbly onto the wet, swaying boards — hyper-aware, after his duty in the trenches, of how slick wood got in water. He secured the bi-plane to one of the pylons. Released from the cramped seat and precarious perch, he stretched long and luxuriously, feeling muscles release and joints pop. Then he carefully tied an oilskin tarp over the seats and controls to protect them from the weather.

“Is there fishing tackle in that thing?” He bobbed his chin toward the rowboat which would bring them to land. 

“If you hanker to ride out a storm …”

“It’s a good lake for trout.”

“Those Indians you were watching are after salmon. I’m told there’s a special type here, landlocked, only breed of its kind in the world.” Jimmy tossed him a life jacket and gingerly stepped into the rowboat’s bow, “but I’ve charmed a farmwife into rustling up some fried chicken and buttermilk biscuits for us instead. I figured a warm kitchen at the end of a ten-minute hike was better than foraging for grub in a downpour.”

“That’s very kind of you, Jimbo, but I’m still leaving.” Gordon slipped the Mae West over his head, before casting off. “We agreed. After this weekend, I’m done.”

“And I won’t try and stop you.” His employer grimaced. “Though, for the life of me, I can’t figure out why you, or anyone, would want to retire to this godforsaken place …”

“I grew up in these parts.” The weight of oars, the pull of water against Gordon’s shoulders, the stretch of unworked muscles felt good as he rowed them to shore. “And there’s unfinished business.”

“You! I thought you said your parents were gone and you had no siblings.”

Gordon ignored him.

“Did you sire a brat before you left for the war?” 

The question earned Jimmy an irritated glance. 

“Okay, okay, I won’t pry, but this place puts me in mind of that hell-hole we landed up in — Whoops, careful for the rocks on this stretch of shore. I almost snagged the boat on some big ones rowing out to you — Remember that place? … It rained nonstop … cold as an abandoned woman … locals hated us … Where was that?””

“Gatlinberg, Tennessee.” Gordon was already craning over the gunwales for a better view, and he deftly steered the boat into an underwater channel to the shore. “And even I could tell the countryside was pretty if the weather wasn’t. They wouldn’t have hated us nearly so much if you hadn’t grabbed that shotgun out of the hands of that old Confederate Colonel.”

“He was after Maxim’s bear — called it a nuisance bear, for Pete’s sake. Are you saying I should’ve let him shoot it?”

“So you shot the guy’s horse instead?”

“The gun went off — an accident, pure and simple. Besides, only a blind, doddering cuss could confuse that soft old circus bruin with a wild, bloodthirsty creature. It was dressed in a tutu, for crying out loud! — With spangles … and feathers!”

Gordon had no interest in arguing, but Jimmy kept grumbling, “Old crackpot just didn’t like the sight of a bear dancing around in fancy girl’s clothes and decided he’d express his opinion with a gun. Serves him right.”

“You’re lucky he didn’t shoot you. Hell, we’re lucky the only thing that happened to us was nobody came to the show.” 

Gordon’s eyes were trained on the shore now, where a young man in spectacles, knickerbockers and a British-cut sportscoat waited. “Were you expecting an escort?”

“No.” Jimmy glanced over his shoulder. “I wonder what she wants.”

“She?” Gordon took another look, “How can you tell?”

The young woman marched up confidently as soon as they touched sand, and Gordon saw that her long brown hair was swept up under a broad-brimmed leather bush hat with a plait that swung down her back.

“Am I addressing Mr. Warkentin?” she asked the pilot.

“That depends on who wants to know.”

“The name is Palmerson, owner and operator of the Akokli Shelf Orchards up yonder, along the East Shore. I was told you might be open to propositions of a commercial nature. Was I correctly informed?”

“Palmerson?” Gordon thought back. “I went to school with a Palmerson from the East Shore, and you, Miss, most definitely are not he.”

“No, sir. My older brother died during the second battle of Ypres.” She pronounced it ‘Ye Praise’ as though something prophetic had detached itself from the Bible and fluttered around half-finished.

“Jack’s dead?”

“Yes, sir. He fell at St. Julien during the bayonet attack, although he, himself, was gassed.”

“Sorry to hear that, Miss.” Sorry, but not surprised. On the transport convoy back, Gordon had learned how an entire generation of young men from his region had been almost completely obliterated. “I remember Jack as a sharp, dependable lad: always quick to lend a hand and smart to finish a task.”

The woman nodded.

“What do you require?”

“I need the use of an aeroplane. Either I need to pilot the craft myself, in which case I would need to be trained how to do that, or I need to hire a pilot to fly me around.”

“Oh? Do you have your own plane, then?”

“No, I would need to hire that one.” She pointed at the Avro.

Gordon chuckled. “I won’t let anybody else sit behind those controls, so that means you’ll have to hire me as a pilot — if your offer is interesting, and if I care enough to accept it.”

“My money is as good as anybody’s, Mr. Warkentin, but I must leave for Kuskanook in time for the late afternoon boarding of the Moyie,” Miss Palmerson explained as she pulled a pocketwatch on a chain from her waistcoat and glanced at the time.

“The Moyie’s one of the sternwheelers,” Jimmy muttered in answer to Gordon’s baffled expression. “Kuskanook’s the wharf.”

“… Which means I must leave now.” She snapped the watch shut. “So what remains is for us to determine the terms by which I might pique your interest. May I ask if you will be staying in our neighbourhood for any duration, and, if so, where and when I might pay a call?”

“James Barton, Miss.” Jimmy stood forward. “I am the proprietor of the Adelphi Circus and we will be performing in the Queen City this weekend, after which our contract with Mr. Gordon is finished unless he chooses to renew it. Until that time, I serve as his agent and any negotiations must be carried through me.”

“How d’ye do, Mr. Barton … Mr. Warkentin, please state your time and place as I must be off or I shall miss my sail.” She called over her shoulder as she strode back to the hitching post and unhooked her horse’s reins. 

Gordon shot Jimmy a glance as they pulled the rowboat up onto the grass and turned it over to keep the rain out.

“Bastes her tongue in pickled rattlesnakes, that one!” Jimmy laughed under his breath, as he carried the oars and life-vests to the shed. “You’re going to have your hands full.”

Gordon figured his time in the Great War followed by his stint as a barnstormer had broadened his mind more than most, so Miss Palmerson’s eccentricities did not fluster or faze him, but she was a most determined and emphatic one, likely difficult to deal with, and that left him reluctant. As she swung a leg over her saddle and pulled the horse around to face them, he couldn’t think of a reason why he shouldn’t hear her out, “I reckon I’ll be at the Pilot Bay Landing tomorrow when the S. S. Nasookin pulls up.”

“Tomorrow, then.” She settled it. “Gentlemen.” 

With a nod of her head, she wheeled the horse around and took off at a gallop northward along the shore road. With the bi-plane safely tarped and secured and the rowboat 

The farmhouse where Jimmy arranged for their dinner took lodgers, to Gordon’s immense relief, for no sooner had they stepped into the kitchen when the skies opened and came down with such a steady pour, it took no time for everything outside to be drenched. Inside, he was thankful to pass the afternoon and evening in an old pressed-back armchair in the corner of a warm kitchen well-lit with kerosene lanterns, smoking a pipe and reading local newspapers. A truly wonderful meal was served of fried chicken with gravy and biscuits and buttered corn on the cob, there had been a plate of sliced cucumber and tomatoes from the garden, a pot of strong tea kept full and hot on the stove and some warm, fresh peach pie and cream. He felt blessed in this comfort, knowing that the rest of the cast and crew of the Adelphi Circus troupe had been obliged to disembark because the Canadian Pacific Railway snaked no further west than the mouth of the river. They would be toiling through the deluge up the shore road to the sternwheeler dock about then. 

After dinner, Jimmy had had to leave in order to organize the crossing with his senior crew members. They would set up the schedule without dissipating the carefully crafted anticipation his business depended on for success. The lake’s waters would be traversed in stages on the various sternwheelers that plied them. As he watched his friend pull on his slicker and gumboots to wade out into the torrent, Gordon knew the drill, having observed it many times in other places: the more pedestrian wagons would be carried over that night, whilst splashier cages of animals, caravans and instruments would be loaded onto the S. S. Nasookin in the morning and brought across with the costumed performers, clowns and side-show artists, creating a type of parade.

Gordon’s participation was not called for until later, when he would, either, trace the letters for Adelphi Circus across the sky in dry ice vapours above Queen’s Bay just as the ship pulled up to the landing, or pull a banner announcing the troupe’s arrival behind his Avro — a feat which would be repeated two hours later over the city where they would perform.

That night, in the room off the verandah where his bed was laid, he opened the sash window wide. The screen kept out the bugs, but he wanted to let in the sound of the rain over the forest and the smells of creekwater and wet cedar. 

Laughter rollicked up from the road. 

When he peered into the darkness, he saw a quick flash of light reflected against a group of Indians, some of whom looked like the fishermen he saw that afternoon. They were leaving the road to set off along a trail by the creekway into the mountains, hoisting a huge cedar-bark basket on poles between them, and the forest swallowed them up as though they had never existed.

 

**9:45 am, Thursday, 15th July, 1920**

 

It never failed to abash and amuse Gordon that his skill as a pilot turned him into an object of hero-worship by a certain type of school-aged boy. While he filled his fuel tank at the marina in preparation for take off the next morning, a group of such boys surrounded and subjected him to a barrage of questions. 

“What sort of plane is that, Mister?”

“An Avro 501.” 

Specifically, it was a surplus RCAF Avro 501 utility seaplane with a modified wingspan and power-plant for increased velocity and strength to accommodate for wind resistance, since the drag of its pontoons interfered with aerobatics. Pontoons were necessary in this region where the topography had few flat stretches suitable for airstrips. Gordon had landed eagles in some seriously rough and tightly squeezed spaces, but he preferred to reserve the spaces on his ledger of risk for the flashier airbourne maneuvers which impressed the crowds his employer paid him to lure.

Also, Gordon wasn’t much of a conversationalist.

“Where did you learn to fly?”

“North of England.”

“Were you a fighter pilot?”

“Yes.”

He had signed up for the war as a Rocky Mountain Ranger with the 54th Infantry Battalion, and ended it as a member of the RCAF. The turning point came in 1917, after the Vicar at St. Anselme’s wrote to tell him that his father had passed away from septicemia as a result of a ruptured gall bladder after he had been kicked in the gut by a horse. Gordon’s mother had died when he was a toddler. 

Grief was not what he expected, compounded as it was by battle fatigue, shellshock, an oversaturation of vigilance against attack and, whenever he closed his eyes, too many faces of the dying and dead. He felt nothing — no rage, no sadness, no loss, no regret. A strange disconnection with life overtook him instead, as though his own tether to the earth had been severed, expressed itself in recklessness. He was barely restrained by other men in his company from running at a machine gun nest which, an act tantamount to suicide. If his infantry captain, Colin Corrigan, had been one of the more ruthless brass, he would’ve taken advantage of his subordinate’s fallen spirits right then and there, accepting his voluntary offer to sacrifice himself in exchange for a few extra feet of soil. 

Instead, he sent him across the Channel on furlough.

That incident still rankled. Gordon had tried to hector and goad his commanding officer into compliancy, and Corrigan had deflected the abuse with a breezy, offhand humour that shamed and stung more than a reprimand, but the reasons Gordon was still alive probably had more to do with the fact that he had grown up with Corrigan on the East Shore, and they had built sandcastles together, learned the alphabet and the multiplication tables together, played pirates and castaways around the same lake together, and there had always been _something_ between them …. Corrigan’s promotion had removed him from Gordon’s side. There was no more connection and camaraderie, nothing left — one less reason for Gordon to exist.

In Hastings, during his leave, Gordon struck up an acquaintance with a British pilot named Samuel ‘Siffy’ Thompson, who took him on an unauthorized spin in a two-seater Sopwith Strutter used for training pilots. Gordon discovered he had a knack for flying. Because the RCAF needed pilots, calls were made, strings were pulled and, soon, he found himself on bleak stretch of Northumbrian countryside, learning to fly. Corrigan had signed the transfer, which also stung although Gordon couldn’t figure out why.

The transfer came at quite a late stage in the war, so Gordon was barely through training before the Armistice was signed. Siffy, a flying ace, had bagged thirty German planes before he was shot down over France, whereas Gordon had flown only one sortie. 

“Did you shoot down any Krauts?” 

“I’ve killed many enemy soldiers, son, but not as a pilot.” 

Invariably, boyish enthusiasm would dry up at this admission, and Gordon learned early on that the glamour of flying wasn’t just about soaring high above the world, but was connected in an intangible way to myths of celestial warrior-gods like Apollo and Mercury aloft in their flying chariots and winged sandals, as opposed to the mean, begrudging and dirty hand-to-hand combat, sacrifice and toil which trench warfare required, with its mud, noise, sweat, stench and corruption. The glamour of flight was in breaking human bondage to earthly drudgery and routine, and Gordon did not want the connection between war and earthly bondage broken. He knew too well that the War to End All Wars began because too many powerful people had flighty notions about battle and casualties.

Jimmy was always poking at him to fudge the truth and tell his groups of admirers that his kill-record as an RCAF pilot was still classified, but Gordon couldn’t be bothered. Everything for him, now, began and ended safely on the ground. 

After the boys decided his air force record wasn’t shiny enough, there was only one left by the gasoline pump.

“Hey, kid, your friends have scampered.”

The boy stuck his hands in his pockets and shrugged. Since he wouldn’t look Gordon in the eye, the pilot took a closer look at him and decided that his sallow complexion and glossy black hair, sleek as a raven’s wing, said enough about why the boy hadn’t chased after his companions. 

“Ktunaxa?”

The kid shook his head and — when Gordon scowled, puzzled — mumbled something barely audible.

He thought about it. “Sinixt?”

The boy nodded.

“What’s your name?”

“Kenny.”

“Well, Kenny, do you want to come for a spin on this thing?”

The boy’s eyes immediately flared wide and round. 

“Well? Do you?”

The smile that spread across Kenny’s face sparked an unfamiliar feeling. It tied in with the brightness of the morning sun, and the briskness of the wind which kept everything from getting too hot. Startled, Gordon realized he felt happy.

It would’ve been too easy if the flight had gone without a hitch, but Gordon had forgotten what it was like to be an active, curious and not particularly obedient eight-year-old boy. The knocking and thumping felt like he had stashed a bag full of kangaroos in the back. Kenny was securely fastened into the dicky seat with snug parachute harness with shoulder and thigh straps and an unorthodox style of lobster pincher latch which clamped as stubbornly as any real lobster pincher. The boy was certainly clever enough to figure out how to undo it, but mercifully lacked the strength in his child’s fingers, so the very worst possible mischief — realized so clearly in Gordon’s fresh-minted imaginings of fatal tumbles, like Icarus, from the clouds —were averted. The constant squirming, fidgeting and huffing breaths of exertions (felt more than heard) as the kid strained against all restraint, however, set his teeth on edge.

Kenny also found the cable which opened the dry ice mechanism, and twiddled with it enough that the Avro spilled its theatrical vapour trail too soon. Instead of sweeping over Queen’s Bay beforehand to alert all the civillians before beginning the show properly, Gordon had to modify his flight plan. He came in on a crescent-curved barrel roll, which traced a symmetrical spiral shape across the sky. The wind was too brisk for sky-writing in any case and quickly blew the vapours away, but Gordon knew the salutation was working. He could see people run out of their homes and onto the beaches. 

Kenny laughed as they waved. He looked especially delighted when the bi-plane flew over the S.S. Nasookin where circus performers in their costumes lined the upper galleries and decks for everyone on shore to see. 

Far to the north, a tug hauled a massive boom of logs past the steep, trackless slopes of Mount Loki to the Riondel sawmill where clouds of smoke and steam billowed from a pair of towering salt-and-pepper burners: gigantic monstrous structures from the earth, a child’s toys from the sky. To the west, the gleaming peak of Kokanee Glacier beamed like a white flame — reduced from a legend of the backcountry, too distant to scale except once in an adventurer’s life, to a more neighbourly size; a familiar, if primordial entity, more like a giant tree in one’s backyard. To the south, they could see all the way into the States.

“That’s Idaho.” He yelled over his shoulder at Kenny, his voice barely heard above the engine.

“What?” The kid mouthed back.

“Idaho.” He pointed to the southern end of the lake. “That’s the United States!”

With a westerly wave, he added, “Washington’s just over there …”

Kenny looked galvanized, a greed and hunger on his face that Gordon had never seen. When, at last, they turned away, Kenny kept trying to look back over his shoulder but he was too short.

Gordon released the string bow which kept the banner rolled behind the plane, and it instantly unfurled with a snap. He circled over the junction of the main lake and the west arm for about a half-dozen sweeps so that everyone within the eight surrounding villages of could see that the circus was arriving. 

First set of obligations fulfilled, Gordon landed the craft at Pilot Bay and, after idling the plane to shore, marched the boy straight to the ticket office, hired the brightest looking porter available to keep an eye on him, and sent him home by boat.

Kenny pushed, trying to persuade Gordon he should learn how to operate an aircraft.

“Teach me, Mister, teach me!” He clung to Gordon’s thigh.

The refrain rang in Gordon’s ears long after the brat was marched up the gangway, when the pilot finally heaved a sigh of relief. Kenny soon appeared on deck aboard the Moyie and, from the flash of teeth and light in his eyes, Gordon figured that, for him, a ride aboard a sternwheeler was just as new and novel as a flight over the lake — a banner day for him in more ways than one.

It was noon, and the S. S. Nasookin was lining up to dock. There would be an hour overlap while some passengers and cargo brought down from the mines in the passes behind Kaslo and Ainsworth, were exchanged with a few of the passengers and cargo brought up from the wharf in Kuskanook, before the Moyie would continue south and the Nasookin would turn into the West Arm. Whenever the wind stopped gusting, the air was heavy with the smells of algae, creosote and horses. Thick crates were stacked on wheeled skids and the Moyie’s crane unloaded others from its lower deck onto the dock. 

As Gordon rolled in the banner which had dragged behind the boat, his eyes strobed the crowds, but Miss Palmerson was nowhere to be seen amongst the various groups of people clustered alongside the bollards. 

He did see two women strolling in his direction. The first was elderly, an aristocratic type whose grey hair was pinned in the old-fashioned Gibson Girl pompadour upsweep, with a massive straw hat and motoring veil— although the only motorcars to be seen were a pair of the notorious sedans bootleggers used to smuggle whiskey over the border. 

The younger of the two women wore the very latest of flapper girl fashions with a sailor collar and navy blue piping. She looked harassed. The older woman was scolding her, and Gordon presumed the older one was a mother chastising her adult daughter until — to his annoyance, since he disliked it when people argued with each other loudly enough for him to overhear — he inadvertently caught snatches of the harangue.

“A young woman like you? — A whole orchard? — All by yourself?” The older woman looked, both, alarmed and impressed. 

“For the most part, yes.” The young woman carried a leather-bound portfolio under her arm, and kept fiddling with a leather case on a strap around her neck, which Gordon recognized to be one of the new Kodak brownie cameras.

“And for the parts you cannot manage?” Eyes narrowed with skepticism.

“My neighbour, Mr. Corrigan, is most accommodating.” 

Corrigan! Gordon’s ears pricked up at that. 

“He and my father were good friends, and when I need help with a bit of recalcitrant machinery or an uncooperative mule, he is just a quick sail down the bay.”

“And Mr. Corrigan is unmarried?”

“Of course. I would never prevail upon another woman’s husband to–” A penny appeared to drop. “Is this what upset Mrs. Odell at the Annual Tea and Bazaar?”

“Indeed. Mrs. Odell has been very upset by reports that you have been calling upon an unmarried man without the company of other suitable adults.” A breeze snatched away their voices, and tossed a wave of willow boughs with rustles and increased laps of water against the shore, “… has it never occur to you that it would look unseemly for a young lady to call upon a bachelor without chaperones?”

Gordon resisted the urge to spit off the dock into the water.

“No.” Now the younger woman was getting upset. “Never. Mr. Corrigan is an old family friend. We attend the same church. He would … We would never ….”

“Did your mother never explain how that might appear to others?”

“But it isn’t only me who must, on occasion, beseech Mr. Corrigan for assistance. He, himself, is frequently …” The woman stopped, unsure of how to explain, “Incapacitated.”

Gordon chuckled. She must have realized this made him sound like a drunkard. The old woman looked aghast. From the corner of his eye, he saw her swat at a marauding wasp with her parasol and knock it clean into the lake. 

Their argument continued, but Gordon stopped paying any heed while he considered their words, being deeply curious and more than a little alarmed by what the young woman meant by ‘frequently incapacitated’. He very much wanted to hear more about this Corrigan, except that a horse and cart trundled up at that point. The rhythmic _shu-shu-sh_ usserations of the S. S. Nasookin’s waterwheel also grew louder as it drew nigh, and the boat’s captain let off the piercing whistle that let everyone know it was pulling into the dock.

By the time the noises calmed enough for him to eavesdrop further, the argument was in full swing, albeit very much conducted under their breaths, as they drew near, although even their hushed tones had the ability to make a dead man sit up and pay attention.

“But what else can I do, Mrs. Spofford? The orchard is all I have, and Mr. Corrigan is my only neighbour within three miles. We must depend upon each other when we can.”

“I disagree, Lily. I think that is a very foolish and silly way of viewing it. Mr. Corrigan will never tire of his abominable bachelor ways so long as he has you to play house with him.”

“Play house?” Lily spluttered. “I do no such thing.”

But the older woman was too wound up to back down. “And what if you should ever happen to meet another man who could be a good husband? What then? What do you think he will make of your arrangement? And, if that isn’t bad enough, consider this: even if Mr. Corrigan has no intention of marrying you, have you ever thought that you might be keeping him from a good woman whom he might, otherwise, marry?”

Gordon had had enough and, since they were practically stepping on his toes by that point anyway, drew himself up to his full height and removed his aviator’s cap and bobbed his head in greeting, “Miss … Ma’am … .”

“Mr. Warkentin, thank you for meeting with me.” 

Gordon started. It came as a complete shock to discover that the flapper girl was Miss Palmerson. To be sure, she looked like someone else entirely. 

“Miss Palmerson.” He was shaken by the change in her appearance. “I did not recognize you. You’ve changed your hair.”

It was cut short, in the new hairstyle which was called the French bob. Even with the glasses perched upon her snoot, she was the picture of a fashionplate.

Everyone stood so stiffly and uncomfortably, he felt compelled to add, “It looks very lovely.”

“Thank you.”

Her older companion cleared her throat.

“Yes, Ernestine. I haven’t forgotten about you, but I’m afraid that Mr. Warkentin and I have business of an urgent nature to discuss, and introductions must wait for another day. Please forgive me, but I must take leave of you now.”

The other woman gasped, obviously unused to being dismissed. After that exchange, Gordon completely altered his purview of Miss Palmerson, having gained some fresh, more sympathetic insights into her mannerisms. 

“Good day, Lily.” With a stiff little bob of the head, Ernestine Spofford walked away with as much dignity as she could muster, her back ramrod straight. 

As soon as she was out of immediate earshot, Miss Palmerson motioned him over to a stack of fruit crates and opened her portfolio. “I have something to show you.” 

A bundle of paper was unfolded to reveal a topographical map. “I presume you recognize what these are.”

He picked it up and took a closer look. “I’m not overly familiar with the area, but these look like some sort of ordnance survey of … this lake?”

“Not ordnance so much as topographical maps compiled by land survey and, as such, subject to some distortion of perception. One or two of these maps are copies of David Thompson’s original works, and so, frightfully outdated.”

He waited for her to tell him what she wanted.

“I’ve been commissioned by the Departments of the Interior for the Dominion of Canada to take aerial photographs of the Columbia River Basin waterways and tributaries which can be used to verify and make corrections to existing charts. We have permission from the government of the United States of America to photograph the river as it flows south of the border as well, to survey flood plains and such, as well. The direction of water flow along the Columbia is the main objective.”

“You?” Gordon’s astonishment led him to speak before he thought things through clearly. “Why would they hire a woman?”

He instantly regretted his words. From behind her wire-rimmed spectacles, a set of brown, unblinking eyes glittered slightly, as though she was thinking about squishing a bug under the toe of her shoe.

“Are you saying that my stature as a female renders me incapable of pressing a button on a camera, Mr. Warkentin?”

“No, of course not. I apologize. It was a stupid thing for me to say. I was just surprised.”

“Do you think that women are unqualified to take clear and accurate reconnaisance pictures?”

“Not in the least. Again, I apologize. I’m just amazed that you persuaded the men in the Department of the Interior to hire you.”

She nodded, considering his words. “I’ve never met anyone from the department in person. We’ve communicated solely by correspondence and telegrams. My qualifications were provided to them by the Royal Geographical Society of the Dominion of Canada, of which I am a member after my photographical essay of the region was published in the American National Geographic Society magazine. I suspect they think of me as a man, knowing me only by my initials, J. L. Palmerson, however, short for Jacqueline Lilah Palmerson which also happen to be the initials of my dear late brother, John Lawrence Palmerson, whom you knew as ‘Jack’. You are entirely correct in that they likely would not have hired me had they known I was a woman, but my reasoning was that as long as I provided them with a consistent and exacting quality of work, it would not matter. Does this change your opinion of me?”

“Only for the better.”

“Very good. So, what I need from you, Mr. Warkentin, are your plane and your skills as a pilot. We will be flying over rough country, and in many places, deep bush.”

“I will be glad to do it.”

“We haven’t even discussed wages or terms yet, Mr—”

“The name’s Gordon.”

“Oh, I see. Well, Mr—”

“Gordon.”

“Well, Gordon.” Her tone grew quieter and gentler. “My friends call me Lily, and in time, I suppose I shall grow comfortable when you do as well, but I’m not quite ready yet.”

He signalled his acceptance with a nod. 

There was a raucous cheer, as his circus colleagues finally walked down the gangway to the landing. From the wheeled caravan in the cargo hold, a steam calliope burbled a cheerful song. Cleo’s fancy poodles performed dances and tricks with the clowns, and people were laughing and cheering, all of which Miss Palmerson ignored, “We really need to discuss what you will require for wages and expenses, flight schedules and plans, terms of remittance, et cetera. This project will have to commence in the late summer.” 

“Yes, and before I can commit, I first need to finish my contract with Adelphi and settle up with the renters who have been looking after my family’s old homestead. After that, I will need to work out a few calculations and have a good look at your maps.”

They arranged to meet up again within a week’s time and were about to part ways when Gordon addressed the matter that remained uppermost in his mind, “I overheard you and your friend. You mentioned the name Corrigan.”

Miss Palmerson blushed. “Mrs. Spofford has strong opinions.”

Gordon shook his head trying to put her at ease. “My only interest in the subject is Corrigan, himself. Would person in question be Colin Corrigan?”

She nodded. 

“It sounded as though his health is poor.”

“I’m truly sorry, Mr. Warkentin, but I don’t know who Mr. Corrigan is to you.”

“He was my Captain during the war.”

“Surely you are mistaken. He was in the infantry, sir, a foot soldier with the Dragoons, Hussars and Rangers of the 54th Battalion. He was never in the airforce.”

“I was also in the infantry at the beginning of the war. I was transferred when it was learned that I had the capabilities of being a better pilot than a foot soldier.”

“Oh, I see.”

“Please tell me, was he wounded?”

“Yes, he was.”

As Gordon absorbed the shock, sharp, cold pierced his chest as though he had been stabbed with an icicle. “How?”

“Mustard gas, just like my brother — but in his case, he survived.” 

After the initial assaults in Passchendaele, soldiers had learned how to neutralize chlorine gas by urinating on their handkerchiefs and holding them over their faces, but there was often a lag time between discovery and execution when some of the men were overcome. 

“Mr. Corrigan was very lucky in that the Huns seemed to have run out of phosgene gas cannisters, since all the other units were subjected to it. But the countermeasures for phosgene are very different than for chlorine, as you can imagine, so he caught a whiff before the correct remedy was determined.”

“How badly—?”

“He can act without any problems most of the time, but his bronchial tubes were scarred enough that he finds certain tasks and conditions onerous because they can precipitate coughing fits. Because of my experience with nursing my parents during the Spanish Influenza….”

“You nurse him.”

“No, he would be offended if I tried and he doesn’t need it. When he’s doing poorly or when the weather affects him — mold from the damp, too much dust when it’s hot or smoke from forest fires — I milk his cows, feed his animals, chop enough wood for the stove and whatever needs to be done to stave off immediate disaster while he recovers. Actually, I simply keep watch for the one “All Clear” signal flag he sets up over the dock each and every morning when he’s strong enough to venture down. If it isn’t flown, I sail over to check up on him.”

“Thank you, Miss.” Gordon’s heart had leapt at the mention of the flags.

“He has another string of signals set up.” A flicker of concern shaded her eyes for a second.

“Oh?” 

When further information wasn’t forthcoming, he asked, “What do they read?”

Lily struggled to find the right words. Eventually, she just shook her head, exasperrated, “I don’t know who they’re for. They’ve been flying since he came home, quite faded and shabby by now, in fact, but he’s never taken them down. Maybe they aren’t even meant for anybody in particular. Maybe they’re for the dead … or for his personal demons, if that Dr. Jung knows what he’s talking about.”

“Jung?” Gordon wondered whether the signal was just for him, and if Colin had kept a fire burning for him after all these years, “The psychiatrist?”

Lily shrugged. “I expect Colin would be very glad to hear from an old friend.”

Gordon agreed. He just wasn’t sure if he was thought of as a friend anymore.

 

**4:45 am, Friday, 16th July, 1920**

 

No croons or cackles. No mad rush to peck at feed or scratch for bugs. A saurian bead of light from a hen’s eye pinged Colin before he realized his chickens stood silent and still, peering eastward like sentinels. When Colin followed their gaze, a trace of sunshine at the horizon past the flats under a slowly brightening sky was the only change. The rooster hadn’t crowed, although it stood at the ready, feathers fluffed to twice the usual size. 

“Coyote, badger, marten …? Cider!” He followed the call with a sharp whistle, but the Shetland Collie already shadowed his heels. The sudden inhale and exhale of mountain air, laden with spores and pollen, left Colin doubled over, coughing, rasping, whooping for air, ragged piercing knives plunging into his chest. 

He slowly regained control of his breath. The coughing left him limp and drenched in sweat. The collie cast an imperious glance over the yard and snorted with …

“Disgust? Impatience? Not a predator, then.” 

After his heart stopped racing, he wiped his forehead against a striped cotton sleeve and replaced his flat cap, then wiped his hands on the back of his overalls. He gave the dog a scratch behind the ears, then continued on his way to the pasture where the clustered tolling of twelve brass cow-bells told him his herd was ready to be led into the dairy.

Once lined up in the milking shed, the youngest Jersey rolled her eyes and lowed, part apology, part distress, as he started to tug, then lifted her hind leg, stork-like, and … 

“Easy, girl!” Colin snatched the galvanized tin milking bucket away, and placed his hand on her flank, warm, strong, reassuring. 

The cows kept lifting their heads from the hay trough to sniff the air, the horses champed and whinnied, and the sheep and goats huddled close to the barn. Only the two spring piglets seemed unaffected by whatever was being carried over on the breeze, snorting and snuffling through their morning slops as though paradise had materialized on earth.

At a loss as to the cause of his creatures’ distress, Colin started to sing: _“Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag, and smile, smile, smile.”_

It caught their attention. All the animals stopped their fretting and turned to stare at him. He began to pump his arms like a marching band signal major, _“While you've a Lucifer to light your fag, smile, boys, that's the style.”_

One of the unmilked cows let out a loud moo. _“What's the use of worrying? It never was worthwhile.”_

And just as they had all turned to stare at him as one, they lost interest and went back to eating, grooming and all the things barnyard animals usually did when they weren’t on the verge of panic. Colin was keenly aware that his audience was drifting away, so as he rounded up his refrain, _“Pack up your troubles in your … dum-dum-de-dum,”_ his voice petered off to a mumble, _“And smile … smile …_ hmm, yes, well, let’s procede as usual then, shall we?”

The Percheron cart-horse delivered a wet raspberry as its final remark. 

Most of Colin’s animals were more like pets and he was sure they understood, at some level, his simple attempts at reassurance, but many whole days would pass where he spoke to nobody but Cider and the barnyard animals. It wasn’t the same as having another human being around, like his parents, or his old mate, Gordon, whose memory was like an unhealed gash. Gordon had always smiled at his jokes and enjoyed his attempts to clown around and entertain him. Without Gordon around, it sometimes felt like Colin didn’t even exist, that he was just passing time.

Someone had been working the Warkentin farm since old Thomas had passed away. Colin could tell that the cherry, plum, peach and apple trees were being pruned and irrigated. Tidy garden rows of corn, potatoes, carrots, beets, onions and spinach could be seen from the lake, and there were a few cows — not sweet little Jersey milk cows like his herd, but some sort of breed raised for meat which was more aggressive and less intelligent. Colin supposed he should take the time to wander over to the house and say hello to the new owners, but every time he started down the beach in that direction, his feet faltered. He couldn’t bear the thought of Gordon not jumping down from wherever he happened to be perched — a rocky bluff, a tree, the second-storey window of his bedroom — to meet him. 

It was about seven by the time the warm milk was dumped into the separator. Cider suddenly perked up her ears and tore out of the dairy and down to the shoreline, barking. Since she did this every time a boat or flock of ducks passed, Colin paid it only a little attention. Soon, however, hollow thumps signalled a centerboard being hoisted from its keel and the clang of stays against a masthead alerted Colin to someone in the bay. He washed his hands in the utility sink where the milk cans were disinfected and stepped into the yard, drying his hands on a tea-towel. As he suspected, another neighbour’s pert little beg-meil gaff sloop was spilling wind as it glided toward the dock. With a sigh, he replaced the damp towel on its rack and shuffled down to the beach. 

“I’ve brought you three boxes of preserves: peach, apricot and cherry.” Lily Palmerson tossed over the bow lines and, while Colin tied them off to a cleat on the dock, pulled an oil-skin tarpaulin off some crates. “And another one of those cakes you polish off in such a mad tear.”

““Mad tear”? What a strange way of putting it, Lily. How very modern of you.” Colin decided not to tell her just that morning the pigs had finished off the last cake she had brought him, and that he couldn’t keep up with the plenitude of her supply. Instead, he asked, “How are you fixed for cheese and eggs?” 

These sorts of informal transactions were essential where they lived. Bad weather, floods, forest fires or landslides could shut down the railway to Creston at any time, cutting the entire region off from the rest of the world. Besides, there was no point paying for things they could grow, raise, gather or trade. 

“I’m fine for now. The hens have started laying again. It was as you said: too much corn, not enough greens. When I moved their pen into that patch of chickweed next to the rockery, they started up again. I will take another bottle of cream and crock of butter, if you have some to spare.”

“Milk?” 

“In those jars I brought over from last year’s canning, three if you please. Thank you. I need to bring back these boxes with me, so might as well fill them with the empties.... Have you eaten breakfast yet?” 

Lily finally stepped onto the swaying, creaking boards. The forward jut of her midriff as she bowed slightly backwards, hands on hips, to peer up into his face spun a swirl of sexuality like a cloud of dust. Colin resisted the urge to cough. 

In the past month, something had happened to Lily; that much was clear. She was so completely transformed that Colin could scarcely recognize her, and it seemed that she was changing every day. Some of these alterations were welcome. She had always been such a timid mouse during the years he knew her before the war and, for a year after, she had become even more dowdy and downtrodden, sinking deep into the loss of her parents to the Spanish Influenza pandemic in 1918. He had watched, concerned, as she struggled to keep her connection with friends through the church group at St. Anselme’s down the lake, but these were very small affairs, whereas the charity work society she had joined in Nelson was full of grand ladies, the sort who made her loneliness and isolation grow much, much worse for all she spoke of them with glowing words. She had been lost behind her spectacles and frizzy hair, scared to let out a peep, often disappearing into the forest and mountain tracks for days.

In other ways, Lily’s recent transformations had a wild unpredictability about them, something unbalanced — the sharp swing to the opposite polarity that kept stretching further and further past its apogee into places where, if the rope snapped, she would be dangerously overextended. Colin assumed that some instability was to be expected when changes were embraced.

“I’ll put on some coffee.” He backed away while hoisting a crate of clanking jars onto his shoulder. “But the animals have been skittish all morning, so I can’t promise I’ll be a dedicated host — might have to run out and look after them.”

“It’s probably the circus.” Lily’s fancy new hairdo, the aptly named ‘French bob’, did so as she nodded vigorously. It suited the new her: short, sleek and snappy. “They’ll be offloading wild lions and tigers in their cages in the city about now. Your tame little barnyard beasties probably caught a scent carried downwind.”

Colin paused mid-traipse. “That’s the first I’ve learned of a circus.”

“Haven’t you noticed the playbills?” Lily bustled past him toward his house. “They’ve been out for weeks and posted everywhere: bulletin boards, on the pylons by the slipways, at the hall in Crawford Bay — I even saw one stapled to the door at St. Anselme in Boswell, like a wedding bans.” 

A cone popped off the towering ponderosa pine next to the beach and clattered to ground, launching a whiskey-jack into the sky with noisy screeches. They both jumped a little, startled.

Colin figured it bothered him more than he had been aware, the new way she acted and spoke around him — all airy-breezy-chattery and with a heaping dose of affectation. It was like she was trying on a new personality and speech patterns along with her new clothes and the bouncy swing in her step. He felt uncomfortable, in spite of wanting to support her in breaking off with whatever had held her back in the past. 

He scratched his head, trying to remember her parents. Joseph had been a remittance man, the third son of a lesser so-and-so paid to leave Ireland as long as he accepted that he was, for all intents and purposes, no longer part of the Palmerson clan. With his remittance and the help of a Chinese couple who did all the heaviest lifting, hardest digging and most tedious tending, he had planted an orchard on the Akokli Creek benchlands above one of the finest beaches on the lake, and set up an ingenious irrigation system where creek water could be diverted into channels between the trees, before flowing back into the bed. Joseph was a clever man, Colin seemed to recall, but also quite a dreamer who would’ve been entirely lost without his wife (and the Chinese couple.) Although he was a very pleasant fellow as a friend and father to Jack, Colin supposed he must’ve been quite distant and cool with his daughter.

Bridget, on the other hand, was a fiery woman who spoke of having arrived as a orphan from Cork to New Brunswick, where she worked as a servant until she left for nursing college in Montréal. She had met Joseph at the hospital where he was being tended for some injury or another, and probably bullied and cajoled him into marrying her. Colin had liked her sharp wits, quick laughter and straightforward, hardworking ways, but realized now that she must have been quite a domineering mother, quick to point out mistakes and keep her daughter humble. 

Upon consideration of Lily’s past, Colin decided he was quite glad she was finally free to find her own bearings. Her companionship in his solitude was a warm and welcome consolation.

“Didn’t you see the barnstormer that ripped over the lake yesterday?”

“Oh, I might have heard something, since Cider gets so excited every time a dust mote floats past, but you forget I was in the war, and an aeroplane or two isn’t such a big hurrah for me.”

“Honestly, Colin, I always knew you were no Adela Rogers St. John, but you’re getting to be too much of a recluse out here.” She used a snooty way of saying ‘St. John’ so that it sounded more like Sin-Jin.

“Adela Tarzan Simian-Jane?” Since Lily was obviously dying to tell him about her latest discovery, he teased her by making monkey noises and miming ape movements.

“Adela Rogers St. John: intrepid reporter — a good one. Don’t be pathetic.” Lily bopped him lightly on the head, squashing all his fun. Her fascination with female correspondents was a hobby Colin quite liked, and he encouraged her to collect their articles and paste them in scrapbooks, much like other young women collected the images of movie stars. 

“Never read her.”

“Probably because she doesn’t write for the local dailies. She’s a syndicated columnist.”

“Oh, a society hack.”

“She was, once.” Lily shrugged off the barb. “When she started out, her boss — William Randolph Hearst — figured women were only qualified to write gossip, but she showed him.”

“How?”

“She covered the Russian Revolution, and has been on assignment following Lenin ever since.”

Now that impressed Colin. It didn’t stop him from adding, slyly, “And how many movie stars did he introduce to her?”

“Oh, stop! — Anyway, don’t change the subject: if I didn’t visit you every three days, you’d turn into a right balled-up old boob; I know you would. You probably wouldn’t even shave or — jeepers! — wash your socks and unmentionables.”

“Roger that, ma’am: every man who lives alone lies in imminent peril of such attacks.”

“For that, I’m just going to have to accept your invitation.”

“What invitation?”

“Why, to the circus of course.”

“Hold your horses!”

Lily turned around and fixed him with a fierce eye. “You don’t have to worry; it won’t cost you a cent. I won two free tickets from the raffle at the Daughters of the Empire Bazaar. All you have to do is take a bath beforehand, wear your second-best Sunday suit and boater, and let me hook my arm through yours. I’ll even spring for the boat fare and pack a picnic lunch.”

“It seems a bit—”

“Don’t be such a wet-blanket. You’ll enjoy it.”

“I suppose I will.” It wasn’t that Colin minded going out and about. He felt uncomfortable with where Lily’s expectations might lead. “I can’t figure it, though.”

Lily plucked a birch catkin off the piping on her starched white linen sailor’s collar and flicked it away. “What’s that?”

“A circus, coming here, to the interior of all places ….”

“What of it? Don’t you think we deserve to see one every bit as much as someone in Winnipeg, Vancouver or San Fransisco?”

“That’s not it. No, I just have to wonder what these genius impressarios are thinking to bring a show of wild animals into the wilderness?”

While Colin sorted through the previous year’s fruit jars, cleaning and filling three of them with that morning’s milk, Lily brought the collander out to the raspberry patch to select the plumpest and ripest for breakfast. By the time Colin fetched her cream and butter from the cold cellar, peeled off his dungarees and rubber boots in the wood-shed behind the back door and shut the screen door behind him, some beefsteak tomatoes from the garden had been sliced up and arranged on the Staffordshire creamware platter alongside a crock of fresh goats-milk cheese and pieces of rye hardtack; Lily’s poppyseed loaf, fragrant with candied lemon, was set on the board, and the raspberries were spooned into bowls with honey and cream. Two eggs were boiling on one of the cast-iron stove’s back burners, and a fresh-caught lake trout that he had kept in a basket in the brook was frying on one of the front burners. Lily was messing around with the poker, breaking apart the last burning log so the house wouldn’t overheat once the sun climbed past Columbia Point. The scent of woodsmoke and coffee filled his tiny kitchen.

Colin poured himself a cup and settled back into the oaken armchair. The table was set next to a series of window sashes opening onto the creek which ran past his house and, beyond that, southward over the lake. His guest’s chair faced the bracken-filled ravine up to the notch between mountains where the eastern sun broke. 

The fact that they ate together in silence warned him that Something of Momentous Importance was up. After he set down his spoon, and fought with the old urge to pull out his pipe from the corner cabinet, he finally asked, “Why won’t you tell me what’s on your mind?”

“I’ve been thinking ….”

“Clearly.”

“It’s been over a year-and-a-half since Joseph and Bridget passed away. I’ve been running the orchard on my own, and doing a swimming job of it. I’m confident I can manage quite well.”

“Swimming.” Colin nodded in agreement. “As opposed to ‘sinking’.”

“But just because I can doesn’t mean I want to, follow me?”

“Not really, no.” He wasn’t so sure he wanted to hear more about this, either.

Lily set her coffee cup down on the table. 

“I’ve been told I should marry, and I think I want to marry,” she announced, her voice shaky and uncertain. “And I’m thinking you’re just the fellow to ask me.”

She punctuated this by pointing her finger straight at him and poking him in the middle of his chest.

Colin was thunderstruck.

“Is that so?” he finally managed to stammer. “Me!”

“That’s right.”

“Why me?”

She rolled her eyes. “I know you aren’t in love with me, and frankly, you don’t put me in the frame of mind for the whole silvery mooning-&-spooning-in-Juning, either, but I don’t expect that. It would embarrass me. We each have our habits and irritations, but I care about you, and, I daresay, that feeling’s mutual. And I don’t relish the thought of growing old and dying alone. Do you?”

“Well, no, but—”

“I know you think you’ve got everything under control with your little Doctor Doolittle set up, here, but you can’t think that it’s healthy to spend all your time talking only to animals. Don’t you think it would be wise to have a smart and capable woman like me around? I would look after you very well.”

That irritated Colin, “I’m a grown man, and not a drinker or a gambler. I’m a responsible man! I don’t need looking after. That’s not a reason to marry.”

“How are your lungs, Colin?” Lily’s face was filled with grim resolution. “Have they stopped giving you problems?”

Any argument Colin was inclined to put up deflated at that moment. His health was a serious matter, and if he was stricken when nobody was around, who would look after his animals? Even so, it seemed a terribly brisk and business-like reason to marry — not too surprising given that it was Lily’s reason. Even so, behind her blunt utilitarianism, he realized her care was sincere. It just wasn’t enough. Her friendship would always be only friendship to him.

“I have to give this some serious thought.” He finally answered. “I reckon you understand: it’s not a decision any man or woman should take lightly.” 

“What is there left to think about? Are you looking for an excuse to say no?”

“I want some time to consider it seriously. Don’t think because you’ve lately gotten into the habit of telling me what I want to do, I’m going to humour you this time. If you push and press and bully me into making a decision before I’m good and ready, then it will be a straight-out ‘no’ and that will be the end of it.”

She looked skeptical, but then relented. 

“Fine, fine, fine, but can you, at least, give me a date by when I should expect you to propose? I don’t want to dangle around indefinitely. There is a lot of planning involved. There’s the church to book, the invitations to be sent out, the supper to be prepared. It would be practical if we could finish it up before autumn sets in and it’s time to bring in the harvest.”

“Fair enough, but how am I supposed to know how long it will take before I decide? It will take as long as it takes.”

“Would a week suffice?”

“It should, but I reserve the option to extend that time, if need be.”

“You will still accompany me to the circus on Saturday?”

Colin scrunched his eyelids closed. “I’ll be waiting scrubbed and second-bested on the pier for you to pick me up and bring me along on our date — sir!”

Lily looked hurt. “Do you think I’m being pushful?”

“Indeed,” Colin said a little too readily, but when her face burned crimson, he grumbled, “Your direct approach is better than the way you used to twitch around like a pigeon with a bumful of hot chili, but you’re going too far. You need to settle into some sort of balance, because, lately … it’s … I’ve had drill sargeants who were less forceful. Also, I was a captain. That should count for something, some more respect.”

Some tears started to well. She stared furiously out the window, beating her lashes in an obvious effort to keep them from spilling over. The gesture made Colin feel a little more tender and protective toward her, since it showed him how much pride she had swallowed and how much stress she had felt.

“Adela Tarzan Simian-Jane, huh?” He started tidying up the table. “I’m guessing you’ve kept clippings of her articles.”

“Of course.” Lily surreptitiously wiped her eyes, then added her plate and bowl to the stack of dishes.

“Bring some of them with you when you swing by on Saturday. I’d like to read them.”

After the dishes were washed up and put away, Colin helped Lily load the crates of mostly empty jars back onto her sailboat. As he stacked them onto the dock, he wondered if this was a good time to broach the subject of her brother’s death. She had always found a way to deflect him before, but he was certain her special care of him had something to do with the way that Jack had died. If that ever-present sensation of centipedes crawling up Colin’s throat hadn’t been caused by mustard gas, he doubted Lily would’ve been so faithfully caring.

The wind and waves had started to pick up. 

“Looks like we’re in for weather.” He observed. 

Lily scanned the deep blue sky. “A brisk southerly means I have to tack all the way home, so I had best be going.”

Colin nodded. 

“Goodbye then.” He said, and after an awkward moment, pecked a kiss on her cheek, as it seemed like the gallant thing to do after a woman proposed. She hopped into the beg-meil and hoisted the sail. By the time he left the beach, Colin realized half the day was nearly gone and he’d barely tackled his chores. 

Unfortunately, he wasn’t fated to get very much accomplished that day. While he tinkered with water-wheels for a hydro-plant he was building on the creek, he ground his teeth over Lily’s strange non-proposal. Colin was clear Lily did not actually want to marry him. Her proposal was too backwards and upside-down for that. Instead of a plain, direct and straightforward question, it was a convoluted and twisty-turned request which had to mean her feelings were just as snarled and tangled. His curiosity loomed large as to why. 

When Cider tore off again as the Savage Protectress of the Property, he set down his tools with a sigh. None of the projects he had touched that day were going right. He was too unsettled. Since it sounded like an aeroplane had just landed in his bay, he went to scrub his hands. 

The sight which greeted him when he left the workshop was the second time he was left thunderstruck that day. He had to squint, since the sun playing through the leaves of the chestnut tree cast such a strong contrast of light and dark across his visitor’s face, but the towering height, sturdy shoulders, broad chest, muscular arms and legs — the shape of him was unmistakeable. Then he stepped into the full sun, and Colin finally saw the familiar black curls and squared features.

“Gord-o, is that you?”

 

Gordon’s last performance ended to with a night out on the town at various speakeasies, and sleeping off the celebrations in Jimmy’s caravan. 

Jimmy had gotten a bit maudlin toward the end, but he got up to make breakfast over the campfire. When he told Gordon it was a shame he was leaving when things were going so well, Gordon produced an important slip of paper.

“That’s Frank McCall, a true war hero, a real flying ace. Plus, he’s a helluva good stunt pilot, landed a plane on a merry-go-round when the engine started failing, and never hurt anyone doing it. He will bring in more crowds than me.”

Jimmy inhaled, ready to pour on some more guilt, but Gordon put an end to that, too, “You always knew we were going to come to this point. I always told you I would only go this far west with Adelphi. I’ve been steadfast about leaving as soon as we hit this corner. It was never going further than this.”

“I knew we should’ve headed down to Mexico first.” Jimmy snorted, making fun of the fact that he had taken the circus on tour of almost every other area of mainland Canada and the United States before arriving here, but Gordon noticed he also took the notepaper with Frank McCall’s address on it and tucked it in his waistcoat pocket. Then, as he stretched, he asked, “Are you going to introduce me to this invisible person?”

Gordon bit into a piece of sausage and chewed. At his feet, one of Cleo’s dancing poodles had wandered over and was staring at him with big, very hungry eyes.

“— The somebody who has always been there?”

The bite was hard to swallow. The poodle had started to whimper. 

“Since when has it been possible to goad me into unnecessary actions, Jimbo?”

Jimmy’s eyes flared. He straightened up. “You are a cold bastard, for all you come across as someone who cares. It’s true that you’ve said all along not to expect anything, so that let’s you off the hook?”

Gordon put down his fork with a sigh. “That is entirely up to you.”

“It wouldn’t change anything.”

“No. Whether or not you decide to let me go, this parting was pre-ordained. You can hold it against me forever if you choose, but it won’t change a thing.”

“What am I supposed to do then?”

Gordon tossed the rest of the sausage to the dog, who snapped it up in one bite. “Let go and move on.”

“That’s such an easy thing to say … Wallace, get out of here!” Jimmy snarled at the dog. 

The two men stared as the poodle shook a pink ribbon off of his ear and trotted away. 

“At least your dignity remains intact.” Gordon picked up the ribbon and twirled it around on his finger.

“Yeehaw!” Jimmy took the ribbon and tied it around his neck, so ending their conversation with a laugh instead of a whimper.

The flight had not been a long one. Gordon had coasted into the bay below Corrigan’s farm on the East Shore and anchored the plane five feet away from the dock, far enough that it wouldn’t crash into it if a wind blew up. The old signal flags were still flying, and Gordon felt breathless with hope and despair as he read the intention behind them, but realized, from their faded and weathered condition, that it was as Lily said: they had not been changed in a very long time. Perhaps Colin had given up.

N (November) "Negative" + C (Charlie) "Affirmative" = _“Distress.”_

O (Oscar) _"Man overboard."_

M (Mike) _"My vessel is stopped and making no way through the water."_

K (Kilo) _"I wish to communicate with you …"_

4 _“… by sound signals (speech).”_

Z (Zulu) _"I require a tug."_

Then Gordon took a giant and very lucky leap and landed on Colin’s pier, where a little arm-windmilling kept him from spilling into the drink.

A collie came barking down to the beach as though this intruder was every nuisance bear in the world. When it came to just within sniffing distance, it stopped and began to whine instead, tail wagging.

“Cider?” He reached over and held out his hand. She started to lick it and whimper with joy. He hadn’t seen her in over five years, and was gratified she still remembered him, “There’s a good girl! There’s a good puppy!” 

As he climbed the stairs and pathway to the Corrigan Farm, he wondered if the greeting would as happy when he came face to face with Colin.

That answer was very soon in arriving. For as soon as he looked up from Cider, he caught sight of the familiar figure standing shock-still on the path before him. 

“Is that you, Gord-o?” Colin’s voice floated down to him. The sun had not yet climbed over to the Proctor side of the lake, but Colin’s face was bathed in white-gold light. His hair reflected it like a beacon. His eyes were shaded with his hands, however, since the light was too dazzling, and those hands shook as if palsied.

“It’s me,” Gordon confirmed, realizing that all Colin could see was a dappled quilt of light and shadow. “I’ve come home. Will you have me back?”

Time started to flow again when Colin closed the distance between them, slipped his arms around Gordon, and held him close. Gordon’s arms enfolded Colin, while the sun warmed their heads and backs. Once in awhile, Gordon wondered if he should pull away, but as long as Colin was content to stay in his arms and hold him back, he had no urge to leave that gentle space. Colin, for his part, didn’t pull away either. So they stood there, on the path, in the full noonday sun, holding each other and not moving, not speaking, barely breathing except to breath in each other. 

Eventually, a cloud swallowed the sun, the world dimmed, a wind excited the leaves and it was time to touch down. 

Together, they prepared and ate a late lunch-early supper affair, set some bottles of pilsner to cool in the creek, and rocked side-by-side on to the wooden swing in the yard, where they could enjoy the fresh air and sunshine, admire the mountains and lake, listen to the play of the wind and water. 

Their conversation was nervous, halting and full of awkward stops and starts. It covered the most important events that had happened to them since Gordon was ordered to pick up his duffle bag and drop it into the back of the jeep transport to the Channel, but all their first words and stories seemed to skate along the surface of any real feelings.

Colin learned about Gordon’s career since they had parted in Belgium. Gordon learned that, by Armistice, Colin had already been discharged with honour and shipped home. 

Just after the war, Colin’s older sister had married a barrister on the coast and had moved their parents into their mansion so they could spend the rest of their days in comfort. Colin had taken over their old farm. 

“What about your homestead?” Colin asked.

“The Vicar of St. Anselme did me the favour of finding tenants, so it has been rented out.” There was a bit of a pause as he took a swig of beer, “To the Chinese couple who once looked after the Palmerson Orchard.”

The first item of business Lily Palmerson handled when she took over the orchard was to dismiss the couple, as she claimed her father’s relationship with them had been exploitive and she wanted no part of any vestigial serfdom. 

“They had nowhere to go.” Gordon explained, defensively. “They were living in a boatshed.”

“I’m relieved. Their situation had always felt dismal to me.”

“As for dad’s personal items, as far as I know, they’re locked up in a box in the St. Anselme church basement until I collect them.”

“Lily brought over some cake this morning.” Colin got up off the swing. “Let’s go slice it up and eat some.”

As it turned out, the subject of Lily and her surprising eccentrities were just the safe sort of landing strip they needed. Through the subject of their encounters, conversations, deals and agreements with Miss Palmerson, they worked through their strange, stilted reserve and re-introduced themselves to each other as friends and more.

Some details of those encounters, conversations, deals and agreements came as a shock to each other. 

“She never told me that she had been published.” Colin shook his head. “She certainly never told me that she had been accepted as a member of any professional society. I knew nothing about any of this. All I knew is that, after Jack’s death, she had taken to sneaking out in his old clothes with his camera, and exploring some of the old prospector’s routes through the bush, even climbing mountains. I found out she used Jack’s darkroom, because I stumbled across some of her photographs — that’s how I learned where she’d been and what she’d been getting herself into. Tsk, such a very foolish and reckless thing to do! She found herself in some sticky situations, because she’d come back covered in scratches and bruises and abrasions, once with the knees and elbows of Jack’s trousers worn clean through as though she had slid down an embankment of scree.”

“What did her parents have to say about this?”

“Joseph and Bridget both lost something vital after Jack’s death. Grief-stricken, you see: they were so selfish in their mourning that Lily, along with everything else, simply ceased to matter. Lily told me once, after she had been gone — for two whole weeks, mind — her mother thought she had squirreled herself off to one of the out-buildings to read magazines and eat their apples — two weeks! She might as well have been orphaned.” 

Gordon exhaled a huge huff of air and shook his head, even though the experience he had gone through sounded about the same. 

“Joseph and Bridget died of the Spanish Influenza.” Colin continued, “Complications from pneumonia and hemorrhages which caused pleurisy. It took them … oh, two winters before last, in February at its coldest, but they had already given up the fight long before. Like your father, they are buried in the St. Anselme cemetary at Boswell. Lily cared for them all through that.”

Gordon thought about something Lily had said, “Do you think she took on Jack’s identity in order to get published?”

“I did overhear the bank manager in Nelson tell her, once, that he prefered not to accept deposits for cheques where first names were only referred to with initials. Since they were her initials, however, there wasn’t anything he could legally do to stop the transaction. Also, Jack was listed as Killed in Action from almost the very start of the war. That information is readily available for anyone who inquires.”

“It doesn’t really confirm anything, though, does it?” Gordon took a swig of beer and frowned slightly as it wasn’t nearly cool enough for the heat of the day. 

“Do you suppose this Mrs. Spofford-character—?” Colin started to ask.

“Ernestine Spofford,” Gordon clarified. “She’s widow of about ten years with no children, who inherited her late husband’s mining fortune. Some old ’forty-niner at the Queen’s Hotel kept hinting that she had been a Klondike girl, serving up bathtub gin in Dawson City — not that I think it’s a shameful thing, apart from the hypocrisy of berating Miss Palmerson about her friendship with you. Her fingers are dipped in all the local charities, political parties, hospital sewing bees, gardening circles … and she generally likes to throw her weight about.”

At Colin’s startled look, he laughed, “After my evening performance for Adelphi yesterday, I asked around — and won’t she be happy to learn her name came up, again, in a saloon!”

“You would think people in this area would have more of a sense of humour about these things.” Colin shook his head. “Since most of us have come from ‘colourful’ backgrounds. Anyway, do you suppose … no, it’s too farfetched ….”

“What? Tell me! Don’t leave me dangling.”

“I just considered, for a moment, whether Widow Spofford saw that National Geographic article, took notice of the initials on the byline, put two-and-two together and is using it as leverage to pressure Lily?” 

“It sounds unlikely.” Gordon shook his head. “My distinct impression is that, while Miss Palmerson doesn’t trumpet her activities, she is forthcoming if directly asked. At least she didn’t hide anything from me. But why do you ask?”

Colin gave him a sidelong glance and simply said, “Good.”

“Oh! Do you think it has something to do with this pressure to marry?”

His former commanding officer said nothing, but Gordon didn’t need him to confirm it. Colin had already told him he was determined to reject the offer to ask for Lily’s hand, and since he was to be her partner at the circus, that was the most logical time and place for the denial to occur. 

“How do you plan to turn this young woman down?” Gordon’s face was stony. Both of them knew it wouldn’t be an easy thing to do in a courteous and gentlemanly manner, given how assertive she could be. “She seems to have been amply persuasive this morning.”

“I was caught off-guard.” Some birch seeds were swept off the armrest of the swing. “I lost my courage when she confronted me about my health. A farmer who can’t look after his animals is like a father who can’t look after his children.”

“But now you have me.” Gordon’s voice was soft and low.

“Do I?” Colin’s smile was sad and wise, and it was clear that their parting in Belgium was fresh in his mind. 

They sat and ruminated on that for awhile, as the heavy weight of regret descended on Gordon’s chest. 

“Colin, I …”

But Colin cut him off. “We’ve been through most of that war, together, Gordo. I think you know by now that I will let you leave if you insist, but if you ever try to kill yourself again, I will walk straight into hell, grab your soul by the scruff of the neck and kick it back into its body until you start breathing again.”

Gordon had no answer for that but to reach around and hold Colin close. 

They were interrupted as Cider — ever the watchful guardian — roared back to the beach. 

From the brilliant golden stream that fed off the reflection of the evening sun, the silhouette of a canoe was pulling up to the dock — one of the strange Indian canoes typical of the marshlands around Creston. A few minutes later, they witnessed what seemed to be a heavy elderly woman in long skirts struggling to get out of it while carrying a large cedar-bark basket. Both Gordon and Colin instantly jumped to their feet and climbed down the path and stairs to assist her. 

Behind her, also getting out of the canoe, Gordon caught sight of another passenger, “Kenny!”

The woman was helped up the stairs on Colin’s arm, Gordon followed them while carrying her basket — so heavy and awkward, he was huffing and puffing and covered with sweat by the time he made it uphill — and Kenny and Cider brought up the rear. 

After the woman recovered her breath, she waved to Kenny and said, “This boy tells me one of you took him for a ride up in your flying machine.” 

“That would be Mr. Warkentin over there,” Colin smiled. “And I’m Mr. Corrigan.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m Maggie Ravenfeather, and this, here, boy is my grandson, Kenny.” 

“Can I offer you a cup of tea, Mrs. Ravenfeather?”

“Naw, but I’d take a shmoke if you got any.” 

“I daresay there are some tobacco and rolling papers in the house. Would that do?”

“Mighty grateful.”

“Please follow me.”

Cider was sniffing and pawing at the cedar basket, which Gordon had set on the ground. A very powerful smell of fish and smoke was rising off it. As Gordon picked it up and started following, Mrs. Ravenfeather turned to him and said, “If you got yourself a cold cellar, you might want to stick that in it.”

Gordon felt confused.

“It’s for you.” She explained. “It’s my best smoked salmon and I hope you will accept it as a thank you present for taking such good care of Kenny.”

“That was nothing,” Gordon smiled. “I was glad to have his company and, anyway, this gift is far too much for me.”

“Aw, just you have a taste. Once people start eating up my salmon, they can’t stop.”

“Oh?” Colin looked impressed. “That sounds promising. Gordon, the entrance to the cold cellar is on the northeast corner of house. It tunnels under the mountain a bit, but your gift can probably go on one of the shelves.” 

“It’s very generous of you.” As he hoisted the basket over to the cellar, he heard Mrs. Ravenfeather relay Kenny’s glowing account of the aeroplane ride. When he returned, their visitors were standing on the verandah as Maggie rolled her smoke and said, “Naw, we already set up the tent around the point over Grey Creek. I need to bring Kenny back up through the Lardeau to MacGregor Lake before autumn sets in.”

“Is that where Kenny’s parents are staying?” Colin asked. 

Trouble darkened the old woman’s face and her voice dropped off. “They’re in the States right now.”

“Oh, that’s right. It’s salmon season down there.”

Since no more information was forthcoming, the gentlemen stood there, trying to convey sympathy.

“Speaking of Kenny,” Gordon looked around. “Where is he?”

“That boy, he’s always running off.” Maggie looked around. “He’s probably just looking at your animals.”

Colin frowned a bit in the direction of the barn. There didn’t seem to be any of the usual commotion from the chickens or the pigs as when there were usually visitors.

“Kenny sometimes gets the urge to take off on his own.” His grandmother continued. “I had to come all the way down here to pick him up.”

“Down here?” Gordon repeated, not quite understanding her. “Do you mean to Creston?”

“That’s right.”

“From MacGregor Lake?”

“That’s right.”

“That’s a hundred and sixty-five miles!”

“Is it?” The distance didn’t seem to trouble Maggie in particular. 

“Where was he trying to go?” 

“South of the border. See, the border guards won’t let his parents come back. They have to be United States citizens, now, and live on the reservation near Colville.”

Gordon knew Colin was distressed by the quiet way he asked, “Would they break up the families like that?”

“Well, they do and they did. They take our kids from us and make them go to school a long ways away. And now….” Maggie sat down on a stump, groaning slightly as she took the weight off her feet. “It was never like this before: our family would always go down to Kettle Falls to fish in the spring and summer and come back up here during the autumn for the salmon runs. We never had to choose between Canada and the United States. Of course, a young boy like Kenny, you can’t stop him when he wants to see his folks. If they don’t let him over the border, he’ll just slip into the bush a few miles and walk across.”

“You don’t suppose—?”Gordon whirled around toward the lake, half-expecting to see Kenny clambouring into the floatplane. Dark silhouettes showed the boy squat-sitting on the dock, staring out at the plane, while patting Cider who sat beside him. 

“He sure is interested in that thing.” Maggie nodded. “I reckon he thinks a flying machine will carry him anywhere he wants to go.”

“ _‘O, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth’,_ ” Colin intoned. “ _‘And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings. Sunward, I’ve climbed—’_ ”

“Eh?” The old woman interrupted, staring at him as if he had gone crazy.

“It will take you anywhere you want to go, if you know how to fly it.” Gordon agreed, “I will go talk to him.”

The lap of water against the pier sounded like a heartbeat. When Gordon stooped to sit beside Kenny, the boy didn’t even look up. 

“Your arms have to be long enough to reach the controls first.” The man explained. “And there are a number of different things you have to know how to operate: like the throttle for the amount of fuel the motor gets, and the flap controls which help you ascend or descend, and the tail rudder which changes your course. You also need to keep your eye on the altitude, which is the height you’re soaring, and you can’t run into any birds, or they will break your engine and you will crash. It isn’t as easy as turning on a switch. There are a lot of things going on up there.”

Kenny looked at him with wonder. “You are trying to teach me how to fly that thing?”

“Yes, although not until you’re older. Much older.”

“How much older?” 

“We will see.” Gordon looked. “A boy who runs away and makes his grandmother worry, does that boy seem to you like the sort of person who should be given an airplane?”

Kenny scowled, sullen and defensive — not apologetic or remorseful in the least. He had been thwarted and it was clear that, while he might not try and commandeer the plane to fly him over into Washington State, he wasn’t sorry he had tried to sneak across the border another way.

“I will teach you.” Gordon promised. “But not until your grandmother says so. How do you think your parents would feel if you died? Do you really think that running away is the solution that would make them happiest?”

His words stung more than if he had slapped Kenny’s face. The boy scrunched up all his muscles and balled up his fists, trying not to cry. 

Gordon, himself, was at a loss. He keenly felt the boy’s shame and misery. Kenny’s willingness to throw everything away in one gesture mimicked his own experience upon learning of his father’s death. 

He reached over, putting a hand on Kenny’s shoulder. 

“Actually, you didn’t do a darned thing I wouldn’t have done. It’s terrible that you can’t see your folks, and it would break my heart if I were in your place.”

“My parents left me behind.” Kenny’s voice was still sullen. 

“From what old Mrs. Ravenfeather was telling me, they had no choice.”

“I’m supposed to look after my grandmother.” The boy grumbled.

“And you would rather be hunting and fishing with the other adults….” Gordon thought about Kenny’s predicament. “If you go home with her and help your grandmother out as your mother and father wanted, I will see what I can do to bring you over the border legally to see them. I can’t promise anything, because I’m not a border guard, but if I can line up the right permits, we will take a flight over.”

Kenny still looked troubled. 

“But no more running away. It would kill the people who love you if anything terrible happened to you. Can you promise me?”

Kenny shrugged.

“Otherwise, I won’t take you.”

Heavy footfalls on the worn grey planks of the dock told them that Maggie and Colin had drawn within earshot.

Gordon stood up and turned back to shore. As he started walking away, he heard a very quiet, “I promise.”

“If you don’t mind paddling me over to Akokli Creek,” Colin was asking Maggie. “I need to discuss something with my neighbour who lives at the orchard. She may have something for the two of you. I will see if she can be persuaded to part with it.”

Gordon knew what Colin was going to do. 

“If it isn’t too much of problem for you,” he joined in. “I will help paddle.”

 

Lily Palmerson was hanging some freshly washed sheets on the line as the group of four pulled up to her dock. She welcomed them all and brought a pitcher of lemonade out into her front garden for them to enjoy, before she and Colin took a stroll down the beach to hold their conversation in private.

She kept chattering about nothing, about foolish things like the peach crop and how much her latest project of new drapes excited her. Colin got an earful about pine-green fabric, splashed with orange goldfish and sage-coloured seagrasses, a pattern which the catalogue described as inspired by Japanese prints, and which she thought would go nicely with the overstuffed divan that she was upholstering in orange-red brocade with olive-coloured piping. The colours were an unusually bold choice for Lily, and had made her tremble with excitement when she picked them out from the catalogue, and through the long process of ordering fabric, paint and wallpaper samples. 

Suddenly, Colin reached around and took both of her hands in his, so that they stood face-to-face, and the prattling monologue about interior decoration died. “You have to know why I’ve come here, tonight.”

She looked put-out, like she wanted to kick him in the shins. She tried to stop him from talking, but he wouldn’t have it.

“I couldn’t understand why you were so dead-set on getting me to marry you, when you don’t even want to be here.” 

Her expression shifted from irritated to furious. 

“You want to be a foreign correspondent. No, don’t shake your head like that. You know and I know that’s the one thing in the whole wide world which most excites you. When you tell me about Marguerite Harrison and Adele St. John, your face lights up, your whole body becomes animated and full of energy, your voice is natural and your speech real. How can you pretend that this isn’t what you should be doing with your life?

“Come, let’s sit down here.” He led her to a massive driftwood log that had washed up.

Out in the lake, trout were leaping up to catch the damselflies which skimmed the water. From the sky, an osprey suddenly dropped and, with a piercing keen, splashed into the lake. It rose in flight, droplets of water streaming off, a silvery fish in its talons, and flew back to its nest at the top of some cedars.

“I had to wonder why, when you so clearly want to travel and write about your adventures, you were so ready to burden yourself with my sorry old carcass. It would surely keep you from accomplishing your dreams. I knew that it didn’t matter to you what those old socialite biddies in that dreadful society you used to belong to thought.”

“Oh, that’s hardly fair,” Lily started to protest.

“Mercy’s sake, why are you defending them? They’ve been horrible and you know it. Frankly, they don’t deserve you — and you know that, too.” A note of anger crept into Colin’s voice. “But I didn’t come here to discuss them.”

His voice broke off as he composed his thoughts. 

Lily’s face was working. She was clearly feeling something, but didn’t seem to know how to express it. She chewed on her lip, and her hands kept playing with the hem of her cardigan.

“For awhile, I was flattered and concerned that you might love me. And before you shatter my ego trying to frame your feelings correctly, I already know that you care, which is a form of love, but not a romantic love. I treasure that. I also do not require such a sacrifice from you just because you care. Even had Gordon not returned to our shore, I was determined to refuse you. That’s what I originally thought.”

“You originally thought?” Lily repeated, looking confused. “What? So now you want to ask me to marry you.”

“Yes, I mean, no … erm, after Gordon paid me this visit, he told me you planned to hire him as a pilot for a project which would’ve taken you from my side for weeks at a time.”

“Yes, but I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

“Patience. Let me explain. If the precariousness of my health was such an issue, why would you leave right away like that? Clearly, my impaired breathing wasn’t the real motivation behind this sudden obsession of yours with marriage, either, right?” Colin slapped his hands against his thighs for emphasis. “I was stumped ….” Slap. “Confounded ….” Slap. “At a complete loss ….

“So, dear, dear Lily….” Slap. “Tell me, tell me, please ….” Slap. “Why, oh, why, oh, why are you trying to sabotage what you cherish most by creating a life which forces you to remain here?”

When the lights went on in Lily’s face, it was as Colin thought; she hadn’t even realized she had been doing this.

“Naturally, whatever those reasons are, I cannot be a part of them.” Colin climbed back to his feet. “I won’t be asking you to marry me, even though you are a wonderful woman. I don’t think a traditional marriage and home would work well for you in any case.” 

Lily’s facial expressions, which had been as volatile as a cat’s paw throughout Colin’s speech, went from astonishment and wonder to disgruntlement. 

“You are probably the only person who could figure out a way to turn down a lady’s marriage proposal without insulting her or coming across as less of a gentleman,” she grumbled.

“Which is why you asked me, right? When I realized you didn’t want to marry me any more than I wanted to marry you, all that remained was to figure out the whys and wherefores.” Colin spoiled it by preening. “But the worst thing would’ve been for me to comply. You and I would’ve been made very unhappy by that.”

“This circus….” She scuffed the toe of her shoe kicking at a rock. “I don’t really feel like going anymore.”

“Hmm, I just happen to know a young boy and his grandmother who would probably enjoy a day out together.” Colin grabbed his chance. “What do you say we give the tickets to them?”

“‘We’?” Lily mocked him as she ran, laughing, back to the house. “‘We’? There is no ‘we’.”

In the end, after the tickets were hauled out and handed to Maggie and Kenny, everyone decided that they enjoyed each other’s company so much, they would purchase three more tickets and all go to the circus together. 

 

It was dusk by the time Gordon and Colin stepped out of the canoe and waved goodbye to Maggie and Kenny. “See you on Saturday.” 

They sat on the dock together — Colin leaning against Gordon’s shoulder, as the canoe disappeared around the point and the moon rose over Sphinx Mountain.

Then Gordon let out a low growl of frustration and hopped to his feet.

“What?” Colin cried. “What is it?”

“It’s time to burn those signal flags.”

 

_— fin —_


End file.
